Into the Cosmos Page 27

  views—became a central policy concern in the party’s top echelons. The

  final revolution was to take place within the realm of worldviews, which

  were to become scientific materialist through a targeted and comprehen-

  178  Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock

  sive educational campaign that was to reach into almost every realm of

  Soviet life. The revolution of the cosmos hinged on the reformation of

  cosmologies.

  When atheist education was revived in the mid-1950s, Soviet atheists

  were working with two conceptions about the nature of religion, both of

  which they had inherited from the early Soviet period. The first held that

  religion was a product of poverty, misery, and the fear engendered by life’s

  unpredictability. In this context the solace provided by religion served as

  an “opiate” for people afflicted by war, acts of nature, or personal trauma,

  and the proposed antidote was the continued economic growth and con-

  struction of the material-technical base promised by Communism. As

  people’s lives improved, this theory held, they would experience less need

  for the solace provided by religion. The second theory presented religion

  as a product of darkness and superstition. According to this model, religi-

  osity was the result of ignorance about the mysterious forces that govern

  nature and the universe and was to be fought with scientific enlighten-

  ment. These understandings of religion and atheism in general, and the

  role of science in the greater enlightenment project in particular, were so

  deeply rooted in Soviet atheist thought that they never stopped guiding

  the approach to atheist education.

  This is not to say that atheist education did not evolve. On the con-

  trary, the Khrushchev era is marked by a growing awareness of the ways

  in which atheist education fell short, as well as concerted efforts to ad-

  dress these shortcomings. Increased scrutiny of enlightenment work

  in light of the new political responsibilities of ideological organizations

  resulted in an increased level of attention to the theory and practice of

  atheist education. Broadly, the party relied on two kinds of measures to

  combat religion and religiosity throughout the 1950s. These measures

  might be classified as “negative” and “positive,” respectively, but were

  by no means allotted equal importance in the first stages of the second

  atheist campaign. In practice, considerably more emphasis was placed

  on negative measures: administrative and legal regulation of religious

  organizations and individual believers. The Council on the Orthodox

  Church and the Council on Religious Cults (later united into the Council

  on Religious Affairs) and their local representatives directed the closing

  down of churches and the registration of religious communities, kept

  statistics on church attendance and ritual observance, and generally con-

  trolled the increasingly strict legal and semilegal measures propagated

  Cosmic Enlightenment  179

  Figure 7.1. Village planetarium lecture, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, in the early 1960s.

  Source: Image courtesy of Kharkov Planetarium imeni Iu. A. Gagarina.

  against the church.82 Positive measures, which grew in importance by

  the late 1950s, entailed a campaign of mass enlightenment. In practice,

  this meant a calling to arms of the “Knowledge” Society (Obshchestvo

  “Znanie”), the primary Soviet institution charged with the development

  of the new Communist citizen on the ground and, until 1964, the largest

  institution involved in the theoretical development and practical applica-

  tion of atheist education.83

  Party cadres and intelligentsia enthusiasts were urged to form

  local-level organizations (atheist clubs, Houses of Atheism, atheist de-

  partments in educational institutions, and atheist sections in local party

  organs, among others). These new institutions held atheist film screen-

  ings, hosted debates, and question-and-answer sessions that brought

  together believers and atheists, and staged atheist holidays to compete

  with their religious equivalents, and—in what was the most frequently

  employed form of atheist education—organized lectures by members of

  the “Knowledge” Society.84 With the intensification of atheist propaganda

  over the course of the 1950s, the “Knowledge” Society received a new

  journal, titled Nauka i religiia (Science and religion), which after several years of discussion and preparation began publication in 1959. The jour-

  180  Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock

  nal was aimed at both the mass reader and the propaganda worker and

  covered the history of religion, the party’s evolving position on religion

  and atheism, and of course the popularization of scientific achievements

  and the scientific-materialist worldview. It also explicitly addressed the

  philosophical and religious issues raised by space exploration in period-

  ic articles on the subject that fell under the rubric “Man: Master of Na-

  ture.”85 The inside cover of the first issue proudly displayed the blueprint

  for the monument to Soviet space exploration planned for construction

  at Moscow’s Exhibition of National Economic Achievements (VDNKh).86

  At the turn of the decade, the society was given the brand-new Moscow

  House of Scientific Atheism as well as the administration of the Moscow

  Planetarium, which became a critical site of atheistic activity—a cata-

  lyst for linking cosmic enlightenment with antireligious thought (figure

  7.1).87

  A Planetarium for Believers and Bibles for Cosmonauts

  In the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, the planetarium was widely con-

  sidered to be one of the most effective spaces in which to conduct atheist

  work, admired for its aesthetically pleasing and intellectually engaging

  methodology that emphasized the experiential component of education.

  The leadership’s faith in the atheist potential of the planetarium was

  made evident by the state’s significant investment of resources into the

  construction of planetariums, despite the fact that as late as 1959, even

  the most central Soviet planetarium—the Moscow Planetarium—contin-

  ued to operate at a loss.88 With the revival of the antireligious campaign

  in the mid-1950s, the number of planetariums was expanded, as was the

  scope of their atheist work. The thirteen planetariums that existed in the

  USSR in the early 1950s were considered insufficient, and atheists called

  for a planetarium in every major Soviet city.89 By 1973 the Soviet Union

  had more than seventy planetariums, the majority of which were con-

  structed over the course of the Khrushchev era.90

  The state’s investment in the planetarium’s atheist function was like-

  wise evident in the fact that in the spring of 1959 the Soviet Council of

  Ministers transferred the Moscow Planetarium from the cultural organs

  of the Moscow city administration (Mosgorispolkom) to the All-Union

  “Knowledge” Society with the purpose of making it a more effective tool

  in the “propaganda of natural scientific knowledge on the structure of the

  Cosmic Enlightenment  181

  universe ( stroenie vselennoi).”91 Indeed,
the state hoped that the transfer would help bring order to the society’s atheist work, and to atheist education in general, and that the Moscow Planetarium would become the

  coordinating center for Soviet atheism. As the All-Union “Knowledge”

  Society leadership stated: “This government decision gives the Society

  the ability to use the planetarium as a base for a considerable expansion

  and improvement of natural-scientific and scientific-atheist propagan-

  da.”92 While the Moscow Planetarium was constructed from the ground

  up according to avant-garde principles of constructivist architectural de-

  sign, it was, in this respect, almost unique. A significant number of the

  planetariums constructed after the war—in Gorky (Nizhnyi Novgorod),

  Kiev, Riga, Barnaul, and others—occupied former church spaces, a fact

  that had both practical and ideological significance.93

  Conceived as explicitly atheist spaces, planetariums hosted enlight-

  enment lectures, film screenings, question-and-answer sessions and

  debates, youth astronomy clubs, and, most prominently, enlightenment

  lectures geared toward the mass visitor. Planetariums were also attrac-

  tive because they not only invited believers to attend lectures, but also

  brought the planetarium to believers. The so-called mobile planetarium

  could organize lectures and exhibits beyond the confines of its central lo-

  cation, on “agitation-bus” trips to Houses of Culture, pioneer camps, pen-

  sioners’ homes, military complexes, student dorms, schools, libraries, red

  corners, parks of leisure and culture, factories, and even local housing ad-

  ministration offices. Using mobile planetariums, planetarium lecturers

  made expeditions to collective farms in a mass populist drive to educate

  the rural population that began in the late 1950s. There they would attract

  an audience by combining the chance to use a telescope and learn about

  the most recent achievements of Soviet cosmonauts, as well as by giving

  workers the opportunity to take a break from farmwork. After listening

  to a lecture, audiences could relax in the field, listen to festive music com-

  ing from the loudspeakers provided by the visiting planetarium, and even

  conclude the night with a dance party.94 Most of all, the planetarium was

  also the perfect place to mobilize the enthusiasm generated by the Soviet

  space program and the most popular lecturers were, of course, Soviet

  cosmonauts. Audiences were drawn in with technologically advanced

  equipment and, most of all, with the opportunity to hear about what cos-

  monauts encountered in their celestial journeys.95

  Yet the work of the planetarium in general, and its atheist focus

  182  Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock

  in particular, was not without problems. Atheist education in the plan-

  etarium was criticized for relying almost exclusively on the natural sci-

  ences, lacking “militancy” and avoiding “worldview” issues.96 It was not

  enough to read lectures on chemistry and physics, the argument went,

  without explicitly addressing their atheist significance by tying them to

  religion and idealism. In 1955 the mathematician and member of the

  “Knowledge” Society, B. L. Laptev brought attention to the importance

  of making clear the atheist significance of lectures on the natural sciences, pointing out that without this, scientific enlightenment could not

  be used effectively in the battle against religion. “We conducted [scientific

  enlightenment] lectures for years,” Laptev said, “and it still took a Central

  Committee decree to reveal to us that we do not conduct scientific-atheist

  propaganda.”97 Such criticism was especially directed at cadres, as not all

  planetarium lecturers seemed to understand the importance of explicitly

  connecting atheism to, for example, lectures on astronomy or physics.

  This was a common complaint about scientists, who, in offering their

  knowledge in the service of enlightening the masses were, more often

  than not, unwilling to exploit the opportunity to agitate explicitly against

  religion.98 To illustrate the repercussions of avoiding direct battle against

  religion, Laptev described a planetarium lecture on the creation of the

  galaxy that he read on a collective farm. When he was done, he asked his

  audience whether they liked the lecture, which was accompanied by au-

  dio and visual materials. The audience answered that they did, but when

  asked what exactly they liked about it, his listeners informed him: “We

  liked how gloriously God constructed the universe.”99

  This was not the first time that Soviet atheists encountered the idea

  that scientific enlightenment did not necessarily constitute atheist propa-

  ganda, but, given the long hiatus in atheist work in the Stalin period as

  well as the acknowledged shortcomings of atheist education during the

  Khrushchev-era antireligious campaign, it was a point that seemed to

  need reiterating. To show cadres the proper way to exploit the planetari-

  um, the Moscow House of Scientific Atheism (Dom nauchnogo ateizma)

  hosted a discussion of veteran planetarium worker I. F. Shevliakov’s lec-

  tures: “Science and Religion on the Universe” and “The Atheist Signifi-

  cance of Discoveries in Astronomy and Cosmonautics.”100 After working

  at the Moscow Planetarium for more than forty years, Shevliakov ob-

  served that in the “battle between idealism and religion,” both the target

  of enlightenment measures, as well as the adversary, had evolved. On the

  Cosmic Enlightenment  183

  one hand, audiences had become both much more educated in the sci-

  ences and much less knowledgeable about religion. “If in the first years

  after the revolution we had to prove that the Earth is round and other

  elementary things; if we had an auditorium that was informed about the

  Bible, the Gospels, the Old and New Testaments, the commandments,

  the Apostles’ Creed [ simvol very], and so forth, then at the present time even the clergy say that the audience knows almost nothing [about religion], and we propagandists are reaping the fruits [ pozhinaem plody] of this revolution in the consciousness of the growing generation, which

  began life after the October revolution, after the separation of church and

  state, and [of] church and education.”101

  On the other hand, the church had become a different kind of op-

  ponent since it no longer had a hostile attitude toward science—some-

  thing that atheists could see for themselves, Shevliakov pointed out, if

  they leafed through the pages of the journal of the Moscow Patriarchate.

  In fact, Shevliakov observed, religion had long sought to accommodate

  science. Even in his gymnasium days in prerevolutionary Russia, “no one

  defended Bible stories in the literal sense that they are put forward.” He

  recalled how, having learned that Earth was six billion years old in sci-

  ence class, Shevliakov wondered how this could be reconciled with the

  Bible’s teaching that the world was created in six days. In religion class

  Shevliakov asked the priest whether this was “a contradiction between

  science and religion,” to which the priest answered: “There is no con-

  tradiction—what for God is one day, is a million years
for man.”102 Then

  the priest told him to sit back down. “And this is not today, but in 1916,”

  Shevliakov reminded the audience. The need to explicitly draw atheist

  conclusions during planetarium lectures was also pointed out by Nadezh-

  da Konstantinovna Krupskaia—Lenin’s widow and a central figure in the

  Soviet education and enlightenment campaign—during an early visit

  to the Moscow Planetarium. After attending an astronomy lecture read

  by an “inexperienced” lecturer, Krupskaia observed that after a lecture

  that did not draw out atheist conclusions, “every believer will leave, cross

  himself, and in his soul say that God’s world is great and beautiful.”103

  Astronomy alone, Shevliakov concluded, was not enough to “demolish

  the religious worldview.”104

  Over the course of the antireligious campaign, atheist lecturers

  across the Soviet Union encountered obstacles in their crusade to obliter-

  ate religious belief. A lecturer from the Tambov region reported that al-

  184  Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock

  though their mobile planetarium attracted visitors of all ages during trips

  to the countryside, he still had reservations about proclaiming success,

  since the atheist message of planetarium visits often did not come across.

  He described a ninety-five-year-old man in one village who “could not be

  removed from the apparatus for thirty minutes” because, as the old man

  explained, “I’m going to die soon, and I refuse to go to the other world

  until I see what’s there.”105 Another lecturer reported that their mobile

  planetarium was very popular with collective farmworkers, especially

  with those of them who belonged to “sects.” Yet during planetarium vis-

  its sectarians would ask many questions and try to “corner the lecturer,”

  in which case, “If they [got] the last word, they consider[ed] it a victory.”106

  The reactions of planetarium visitors brought to light a phenomenon that

  Soviet atheists should perhaps not have found so surprising—namely,

  that the cosmological connection between space exploration and atheism

  was neither necessary nor entirely obvious. The history of science pro-

  vided numerous examples where the elegant construction of the universe

  was indeed taken to prove the existence of an all-powerful creator rather